Saban: 2023 Alabama team showing signs of 'having the right stuff'

How does this season’s Alabama team compare to past squads that have won championships? That’s not a question Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban loves, but he did share his assessment of the 2023 squad, two days before Alabama begins its season against Middle Tennessee.

He is still in a wait-and-see mode, but Saban has been encouraged by his latest team.

“I will say this about this team: I don’t know if this team is talented enough to win a championship, but I do think they’ve shown signs of having the right stuff,” Saban said. “We’ve got a lot of good guys on the team. We don’t have a lot of complainers. We don’t have a lot of negative people. A lot of people are positive. A lot of people buy into doing things the way we want them to do it and to the standard we want them to do it to.

“And they’re willing to work and they seem to have pretty good chemistry and they like playing. They like practicing. They have fun. They enjoy their work. So that hasn’t always been true. I don’t know if we have enough talent to do it, but so far – so far because the grind of the season can challenge you and test as to whether you can persevere that kind of commitment to things – I’ve been encouraged by the competitive character this team has.”

Saban has routinely praised this group for its approach to spring and summer workouts, and he offered it again as one of his last remarks before departing his first radio show of the year.

“I like this team,” Saban said at Baumhower’s Victory Grille. “I like the attitude on this team and the character that they have, and I’m excited about seeing how well they go out and execute and play in the game. Until you play a game, you never know how that’s gonna go. It’ll give us a good idea of where we are and where we need to go.”

Alabama, ranked No. 4 in the preseason AP Top 25 Poll, will kick off a new season with several new faces in key positions, not only on its roster but on Saban’s staff. The Tide will have a new starting quarterback, a number of new starters around him and several new players stepping in on the defensive side of the ball. Both phases will have new coordinator, as well.

Saban does not like to compare his Alabama teams. The head coach is entering Year 17 at the helm of the Crimson Tide program and has won six national championships since he arrived in Tuscaloosa in 2007. When he was asked how this year’s team compares to some of the groups of the past that won titles on Thursday evening, he prefaced his response with that.

But he also provided insight into the kind of mindset it takes to be crowned champions.

“There’s some things that championship teams have always had in common,” Saban said in his first radio show of the 2023 season. “The teams that had the best mindset – we’ve always had talented teams and we’ve had several other teams that were talented enough to win a championship that didn’t. I think it goes back to talent is not enough. You’ve gotta have the right mindset to go with it. So people have to be totally committed and invested in things like discipline and work ethic and perseverance and overcoming adversity and pride in performance and have that sort of burning desire to wanna accomplish something, wanna do something.

“And you’ve gotta have the right chemistry on your team where everybody buys into it and the leadership on the team does not put up with anybody who’s not bought into and not doing the things that they’re supposed to do. And I think that’s what sets apart a championship team from some of the teams that were talented enough to win a championship but didn’t. And that doesn’t mean they weren’t good people, it just means they weren’t quite as hungry, committed, whatever you wanna call it to doing the things they needed to do to win. And there’s always the issue of complacency that you’ve gotta deal with and how satisfied do people get.”

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